Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (62 page)

She closed her eyes and thought about Butler House. Having survived Safe Haven, Fran could imagine all too well what was going on right now in South Carolina. There would be blood. And death. And unimaginable horror. They would need help.

Looking at her family, Fran knew there were things worth fighting, and dying, for.

For the hundredth time she questioned whether they were doing the right thing.

And for the hundredth time, she didn’t know the answer.

Tom

Seeing Ol’ Jasper in the hall ahead, Tom did a reversal and ran back the way he came, passing Sturgis as he stuck his head out of the satanic chapel. Without his flashlight, Tom was at the mercy of his glow stick, which didn’t illuminate more than a few steps ahead of him. He bumped into a wall when the hall turned a corner, kept sprinting, and wound up in front of some double doors.

Tom tugged one open and saw he was in a large, open room. Tile floors. Ornate, crystal chandeliers. A row of chairs against one wall. A stage.

It was a ball room.

He drew his gun, keeping his knife in his left hand, and began to make his way across the dance floor. It was dark, quiet, eerie, and Tom was shaking so badly he felt he might fall over. He’d never been so frightened, and his mind kept flitting between the horror of what was happening and the horror of what he’d already gone through. He kept replaying the same terrifying scenes, over and over, and wanted to find someplace safe to hide and never come out again.

But people were counting on him. Good people. And fear be damned, Tom wasn’t in the business of letting people down. Even if he was going to die of fright in the process.

Tom reached a doorway, cleared it, spinning as something lunged at him in the darkness.

He fired, his Sig kicking, and then jumped to the side as a black object hurtled past him. Keeping a bead, he stared as it jerked to a stop and swung from the ceiling.

A body bag.

But he quickly realized something was strange. Bodies had weight as well as mass, but this swung like it couldn’t have weighed more than a few kilograms.

Tom reached for it carefully, and squeezed.

Fake. A prop, like they had in haunted houses around Halloween, where you paid ten bucks to have some teen in a mask jump out and say
boo!

What was the point of that?

He followed the track on the ceiling—a metal rail that the body bag had been hanging from—and came to a breakfront.

Tom braced himself for something to pop out, and his expectations were met when a rubber zombie pushed through the cabinet doors, making a pneumatic hissing sound. Another phony prop, probably triggered by a motion sensor, like the body bag had been.

Though in a state of hyper-alertness, some rational thoughts still managed to gain traction in Tom’s fear-addled brain. He felt like he was missing some key element. They’d all been summoned here, offered money to be part of an experiment. Forenzi, though certainly odd, seemed sincere enough. He’d told them the goal was to scare them, and he’d made good on his promise.

But had Forenzi’s promise involved these silly Halloween gags? Was that his plan? And had something gone terribly wrong?

Tom was fighting for his life against an unknown enemy that apparently couldn’t be harmed. He had shot two of his attackers, and also slashed Sturgis across the chest. But that didn’t even slow them down.

Was there something supernatural going on? And if so, how did these dime-store attempts at scares mesh with what was happening elsewhere in Butler House?

Had the fake haunted house somehow become real?

He kept moving, and came upon a large, black crate in the center of the floor.

No, not a crate. A coffin. And not a real one. This was another Halloween prop, made of plywood. Tom approached, knowing exactly what was going to happen. The lid would open, and some fake monster—maybe a vampire or a mummy—was going to pop out.

Tom got within a meter of it, gun pointed forward, anticipating the obvious.

As predicted, the lid opened.

As predicted, a monster sat up in the coffin.

It wasn’t a vampire or mummy. It was some bizarre, bloody mannequin with a gas mask on. There were many gashes on its bare chest, glistening with stage blood.

“Hee hee,” went the prop.

Tom kept his Sig on it, then slowly walked past. It was creepier than the zombie in the breakfront, and the body bag on a conveyor track, but Tom was going to save his adrenaline for real threats, not fake ones.

“Hee hee hee.”

Movement, in front of Tom. He held fire as another body bag swung past on a pulley track. He watched it swing past the empty coffin, and disappear into the darkness.

Tom pressed forward, and then his fear spiked. He spun again, staring at the coffin.

The gas masked prop was gone.

Tom looked side to side, sweeping with his Sig. That prop apparently wasn’t a prop. Tom remembered Forenzi’s dinner speech and realized it was—

“Hee hee hee hee.”

The Giggler.

Now where the hell did it go?

Tom turned in a slow circle, ready to shoot anything that moved. He was so focused on what was around him that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking, and suddenly he lost his footing and stepped into a hole, falling onto his ass.

He tried to pull his leg free, and his calf screamed at him. Tom holstered his gun and reached into the hole in the floor.

Spikes. Digging into his skin.

“Hee hee hee hee.”

The Giggler walked out of the dark, into view. He was rubbing a large, bloody meat cleaver against his chest.

Tom drew his Sig and emptied his clip into the demon.

Nothing happened. The Giggler stood there, staring, swaying back and forth.

“Tom…”

Tom checked his other side, and saw a pink glow in the distance.

Moni. She had a pink light stick.

“Moni! Run!”

The pink light got closer.

“No, Moni! Get away! You need to get out of here!”

Moni slowly came into view. But it wasn’t Moni.

It was Aabir, holding Moni’s glow sick. Her eyes were completely black. She opened her mouth and roaches dropped out of it.

“Hee hee hee.”

The Giggler had halved the distance between them. Tom realized he wasn’t simply rubbing the meat cleaver against his bare skin. He was actually cutting himself, blood streaming out of the wounds he was making.

Tom blinked. His vision was getting blurry. His thoughts, fuzzy.

Drugged. Something in the spikes.

He stared back at Aabir. She was kneeling next to him. Tom held up his knife, pointed it at her, but he’d begun to see double.

He slashed at her, trying to keep her away, but everything started to fade.

Her hand shot out and she grabbed his wrist, easily prying the knife away.

Tom’s eyes closed, but he forced them open.

Can’t pass out. Not now…

Blackout.

And then he was in the throes of a full blown nightmare, unable to breath, drowning in some sort of slimy sea.

Tom’s eyes popped open, panic making him shake. Aabir was on top of him. She had her mouth around his nose, her wet tongue sticking up his nostril.

He pushed her away, eyelids fluttering.

Must. Stay. Awake. Must…

Blackout.

Then Tom was choking, thrashing around, coughing and spitting—

—because his mouth was filled with cockroaches.

Tom looked up, and the Giggler was pinning down his shoulders, staring down at him. Aabir had her hands down Tom’s pants, and she was jamming her fingers into his ass, feeling like she was tearing him apart.

“Hee hee hee.”

Tom screamed.

He screamed louder and harder than he ever had in his life.

Then the Giggler pulled off his gas mask, and maggots rained down on Tom, squirming in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, as he continued to scream and scream until unconsciousness finally took him.

Mal

The dust under the bed got in Mal’s eyes and the ragged gash on his neck, amplifying the pain.

He was so frightened he couldn’t breathe.

Under the dust ruffle, Mal saw Colton’s feet enter the bedroom. When he took a step, his old leather satchel clanged.

His bag of ghastly surgical instruments, still trying to conduct his insane experiments upon the living.

Mal let his breath out slow, then sucked dust into his nostrils—

Oh jesus I’m going to sneeze.

Mal clamped his hand over his mouth and nose, pinching his nostrils shut.

Please don’t please don’t please…

The urge to sneeze passed.

Colton continued to move toward the bed. His feet stopped less than half a meter from Mal’s face.

He doesn’t know I’m in here. If I keep absolutely still, he’ll go away.

Mal kept absolutely still.

Then something tugged on Mal’s foot.

Then he felt his pants cuff being raised up, baring his calf. He shook with effort as he fought not to scream.

What the hell is that?

It was small. Small and—

Hairy.

A rat? A rabid raccoon?

“Maaaaaaaaaaal,”
Colton droned.

The ghost dropped the medical equipment bag, which clanged inches from Mal’s nose.

Then whatever was tugging on Mal’s leg bit him.

The pain was immediate and excruciating, and Mal yelled and kicked out, hearing something screech, and then he was trying to paw through the dust and get out from under the bed. When he did, he stared up at Colton, standing over him.

“I… want… your… hand…”

Fast as a striking rattlesnake, Colton reached down and grabbed Mal’s hand—

—pulling it off.

Mal clawed himself up to his feet and scampered past Colton, letting the ghost have his rubber prosthetic, rushing out of the room and down the hallway. He tugged out his light stick, flew down the staircase, found the route to the basement, and took more stairs down to the lower level where he’d left his wife and the others.

But they were no longer there.

Out of breath, scared shitless, and now in a state of full-on despair, Mal filled his lungs and cried out, “DEB!”

She didn’t answer.

Mal began to jog, deeper into the underground bowels of Butler House, until he came to a V with tunnels leading off to the right and left.

“Deb!”

No reply.

Left or right, Mal? Which way to go?

Is she even down here?

He went right. The bare bulbs hanging from the overhead braces were dim and far apart, and Mal’s light stick was getting weaker.

“Deb! Where are you?”

Mal heard his voice echo down the tunnel. But Deb’s voice didn’t echo back.

His neck hurt like crazy, but the bite on his leg was really starting to throb—bad enough that he’d begun to limp. He lifted his pants leg and took a quick look at it.

The bite was an oval, and some of the flesh was missing. Like he’d had a hunk gnawed out of him by a baby vampire.

He pulled his sock up over the wound, which was really all he could do with only one hand, and then the darkness was split by a sharp
CRACK!
and Mal felt his back scream at him.

Mal fell forward and turned over, because it hurt like he’d been set on fire. That’s when he saw the figure with the eyepatch and the whip standing just a meter away.

Blackjack Reedy.

Frank

When Frank Belgium was in grade school, he got picked on a lot for being nerdy. Frank wasn’t good at sports, was very good at science and math, and had a speech dysfluency where he’d often repeat a word three times. In sixth grade, he was challenged by a bully, and became a school legend for the fastest any kid had ever lost a fight. Eyewitness testimony was split on whether it took two or three seconds for Frank to go down, the result of a bloody nose.

It had been the most painful thing Frank had ever experienced, up until now.

His arm hurt a lot worse.

About ten to the eighth power worse.

They ran for their lives through the underground tunnels, away from Jebediah Butler, each step agonizing. Frank wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not, but he thought he could feel his broken bones grind together every time his foot hit the ground.

As in sixth grade, he felt no shame in crying. He was, however, able to refrain from the embarrassment of calling for his mother. But that was only because his mother was dead.

The alcohol Sara had given him lasted no more than fifty meters, before he stooped and puked it all over his shoes. Vomiting offered only a brief respite from the pain of jogging, because Sara was tugging him along before he was even able to finish.

They came to a fork in the tunnel, went left, and then went right at the next T junction, and left again, and then Frank lost track of where he was and just concentrated on praying for death.

Finally Sara pulled him into an actual room, unlike the mineshafts they’d been navigating. This had a concrete floor, and concrete walls, which were covered with crosses.

“We’ve found the Butler House crypt,” Pang said.

That explained the concrete floor, walls, and crosses. Frank counted at least ten burial vaults, and then he had to stop to throw up again. When he finished, he sat on the floor and resumed crying.

Sara stayed with him, patting his back. He must have been the most pathetic, unsexy man on the planet right then, but she didn’t leave his side.

“Did you see see see the movie
Titanic
?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Remember, after the ship sinks…”

“Bro, I haven’t seen it yet,” Pang interrupted. “You gotta spoiler alert that shit.”

“After it sinks,” Frank continued, “and Jack tells Rose that getting on the ship was the best thing that ever happened to him, because he got to meet her?”

Sara nodded.